Study shows we have ‘reverse beer goggles’

Mick Dennison

At last, it’s official, alcohol does make you more attractive to the opposite sex. And that’s when YOU are having a tipple.

Those boffins at the University of Bristol rather than trying to find a cure for malaria or any other world changing research have been looking into the amorous properties of booze.

They have found that having one large glass of wine increases facial flushing and confidence. This apparently makes the drinker more attractive to others (in their own minds), and more likely to ‘get lucky’.

The researchers, taking a group of forty men and forty women students, no surprise there then, found that people who had downed one 250ml glass of 14 per cent wine, were consistently voted as the most attractive. Sober subjects and those who had drunk too much were rated as far less attractive than a tipsy subject.

So, in order to pull the opposite sexes ensure you don’t get hammered.

Now, without teaching anyone’s granny to suck eggs, do we really need highly paid and educated boffins to tell us this. You only have to stand behind any bar to see alcohol fuelled lotharios attempting to charm the birds out of the trees with their pathetic efforts. If only there was sound on my CCTV, I’d make a fortune on You’ve Been Framed.

It was found last year by the same researchers that the myth of beer goggles was just that, sheer fantasy. Their new study this year however gives us a new saying – reverse beer goggles.

Always one to carry out my own research I downed a large glass of Merlot, again just for the benefit of the study and made a beeline for the wife who was busy doing some job or other around the pub. She herself looked stressed, tired and cheesed off.

“Hi babe”, I gave her my smooth patter, “you are looking really lovely today”. Okay, not the best line but I’m rusty at the old chat up nowadays.

“Get that insane grin off your face”, she snarled, “and don’t even think about that tonight – have you been drinking”?